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Ali Pacha. Their ninth war was with him; and he, like all before him, was beaten ; but not like all before him did Ali sit down in resignation under his defeat. His hatred had now become fiendish; no other prosperity or success had any grace in his eyes so long as Suli stood, by which he had been overthrown, trampled on, and signally humbled. Life itself was odious to him if he must continue to witness the triumphant existence of the abhorred little mountain village which had wrung laughter at his expense from every nook of Epirus. Delenda est Carthago! Suli must be exterminated! became, therefore, from this time, the master watchword of his secret policy. And on the 1st of June, in the year 1792, he commenced his second war against the Suliotes at the head of 22,000 men. This was the second war of Suli with Ali Pacha; but it was the tenth war on their annals; and, as far as their own exertions were concerned, it had the same result as all the rest. But, about the sixth year of the war, in an indirect way Ali made one step towards his final purpose, which first manifested its disastrous tendency in the new circumstances which succeeding years brought forward. 1797 the French made a lodgment in Corfu ; and, agreeably to their general spirit of intrigue, they had made advances to Ali Pacha and to all other independent powers in or about Epirus. Amongst other states, in an evil hour for that illfated city, they wormed themselves into an alliance with Prevesa; and in the following year their own quarrel with Ali Pacha gave that crafty robber a pretence, which he had long courted in vain, for attacking the place with his overwhelming cavalry before they could agree upon the mode of defence, and long before any mode could have been tolerably matured. The result was one universal massacre, which raged for three days, and involved every living Prevesan, excepting some few who had wisely made their escape in time, and excepting those who were reserved to be tortured for Ali's special gratification, or to be sold for slaves in the shambles. This dreadful catastrophe, which in a few hours rooted from the earth an old and flourishing community, was due in about equal degrees to the fatal intriguing of the interloping French, and to the rankest treachery in a quarter where it could least have been held possible,—namely, in a

Suliote, and a very distinguished Suliote, Captain George Botzari; but the miserable man yielded up his honour and his patriotism to Ali's bribe of one hundred purses (perhaps at that time equal to £2500 sterling). The way in which this catastrophe operated upon Ali's final views was obvious to everybody in that neighbourhood. Parga on the sea-coast was an indispensable ally to Suli: now Prevesa stood in the same relation to Parga, as an almost indispensable ally, that Parga occupied towards Suli.

This shocking tragedy had been perpetrated in the October of 1798; and in less than two years from that date,—namely, on the 2d of June 1800,-commenced the eleventh war of the Suliotes, being their third with Ali, and the last which, from their own guileless simplicity, meeting with the craft of the most perfidious amongst princes, they were ever destined to wage. For two years, that is until the middle of 1802, the war, as managed by the Suliotes, rather resembles a romance or some legend of Paladins than any grave chapter in modern history. Amongst the earliest victims it is satisfactory to mention the traitor George Botzari; who, being in the power of the Pacha, was absolutely compelled to march with about 200 of his kinsmen, whom he had seduced from Suli, against his own countrymen, under whose avenging swords the majority of them fell, whilst the arch-traitor himself soon died of grief and mortification. After this Ali himself led a great and well-appointed army in various lines of assault against Suli. But so furious was the reception given to the Turks, so deadly and so uniform their defeat, that panic seized on the whole army, who declared unanimously to Ali that they would no more attempt to contend with the Suliotes," who," said they, "neither sit nor sleep, but are born only for the destruction of men." Ali was actually obliged to submit to this strange resolution of his army; but, by way of compromise, he built a chain of forts pretty nearly encircling Suli, and simply exacted of his troops that, being for ever released from the dangers of the open field, they should henceforward shut themselves up in these forts and constitute themselves a permanent blockading force, for the purpose of bridling the marauding excursions of the Suliotes. It was hoped that from the close succession of

these forts the Suliotes would find it impossible to slip between the cross fires of the Turkish musketry, and that, being thus absolutely cut off from their common resources of plunder, they must at length be reduced by mere starvation. That termination of the contest was in fact repeatedly within a trifle of being accomplished; the poor Suliotes were reduced to a diet of acorns, and even of this food had so slender a quantity that many died, and the rest wore the appearance of blackened skeletons. All this misery, however, had no effect to abate one jot of their zeal and their undying hatred to the perfidious enemy who was bending every sinew to their destruction. It is melancholy to record that such perfect heroes, from whom force the most disproportioned, nor misery the most absolute, had ever wrung the slightest concession or advantage, were at length entrapped by the craft of their enemy, and by their own foolish confidence in the oaths of one who had never been known to keep any engagement which he had a momentary interest in breaking. Ali contrived first of all to trepan the matchless leader of the Suliotes, Captain Foto Giavella, who was a hero after the most exquisite model of ancient Greece,-Epaminondas, or Timoleon, and whose counsels were uniformly wise and honest. After that loss all harmony of plan went to wreck amongst the Suliotes; and at length, about the middle of December 1803, this immortal little independent state of Suli solemnly renounced by treaty to Ali Pacha its sacred territory, its thrice-famous little towns, and those unconquerable positions among the crests of wooded inaccessible mountains which had baffled all the armies of the crescent, led by the most eminent of the Ottoman Pachas, and not seldom amounting to 20,000, 25,000, and, in one instance, even to more than 30,000 men. The articles of a treaty which on one side there never was an intention of executing are scarcely worth repeating: the amount was, that the Suliotes had perfect liberty to go whither they chose, retaining the whole of their arms and property, and with a title to payment in cash for every sort of warlike store which could not be carried off. In excuse for the poor Suliotes in trusting to treaties of any kind with an enemy whom no oaths could bind for an hour, it is but fair to mention that they

were now absolutely without supplies either of ammunition or provisions, and that for seven days they had suffered under a total deprivation of water, the sources of which were now in the hands of the enemy and turned into new channels. The winding up of the memorable tale is soon told :-The main body of the fighting Suliotes, agreeably to the treaty, immediately took the route to Parga, where they were sure of a hospitable reception,—that city having all along made common cause with Suli against their common enemy Ali. The son of Ali, who had concluded the treaty, and who inherited all his father's treachery, as fast as possible despatched 4000 Turks in pursuit, with orders to massacre the whole. But in this instance, through the gallant assistance of the Parghiotes, and the energetic haste of the Suliotes, the accursed wretch was disappointed of his prey. As to all the other detachments of the Suliotes, who were scattered at different points, and were necessarily thrown everywhere upon their own resources without warning or preparation of any kind, they, by the terms of the treaty, had liberty to go away or to reside peaceably in any part of Ali's dominions. But, as these were mere windy words, it being well understood that Ali's fixed intention was to cut every throat among the Suliotes, whether of man, woman, or child,—nay, as he thought himself dismally ill-used by every hour's delay which interfered with the execution of that purpose,—what rational plan awaited the choice of the poor Suliotes, finding themselves in the centre of a whole hostile nation, and their own slender divisions cut off from communication with each other? What could people so circumstanced propose to themselves as a suitable resolution for their situation? Hope there was none; sublime despair was all that their case allowed; and, considering the unrivalled splendours of their past history for more than one hundred and sixty years, perhaps most readers would reply in the famous words of Corneille, Qu'ils mourussent. That was their own reply to the question now so imperatively forced upon them; and die they all did. It is an argument of some great original nobility in the minds of these poor people that none disgraced themselves by useless submissions, and that all alike, women as well as men, devoted themselves in the "high Roman

fashion" to the now expiring cause of their country. The first case which occurred exhibits the very perfection of nonchalance in circumstances the most appalling. Samuel, a Suliote monk of somewhat mixed and capricious character, and at times even liable to much suspicion amongst his countrymen, but of great name and of unquestionable merit in his military character, was in the act of delivering over to authorized Turkish agents a small outpost which had greatly annoyed the forces of Ali, together with such military stores as it still contained. By the treaty, Samuel was perfectly free, and under the solemn protection of Ali; but the Turks, with the utter shamelessness to which they had been brought by daily familiarity with treachery the most barefaced, were openly descanting to Samuel upon the unheard-of tortures which must be looked for at the hands of Ali by a soldier who had given so much trouble to that Pacha as himself. Samuel listened coolly; he was then seated on a chest of gunpowder, and powder was scattered about in all directions. He watched in a careless way until he observed that all the Turks, exulting in their own damnable perfidies, were assembled under the roof of the building. He then coolly took the burning snuff of a candle, and threw it into a heap of combustibles, still keeping his seat upon the chest of powder. It is unnecessary to add that the little fort, and all whom it contained, were blown to atoms. And, with respect to Samuel in particular, no fragment of his skeleton could ever be discovered.1 After this followed as many separate tragedies as there were separate parties of Suliotes. When all hope and all retreat were clearly cut off, then the women led the great scene of self-immolation, by throwing their children headlong from the summit of precipices,—which done, they and their husbands, their fathers and their sons, hand in hand, ran up to the brink of the declivity, and followed those whom they had sent before. In other situations, where there was a possibility of fighting with effect, they made a long and bloody resistance, until the Turkish

1 The deposition of two Suliote sentinels at the door, and of a third person who escaped with a dreadful scorching, sufficiently established the facts: otherwise the whole would have been ascribed to the treachery of Ali or his son.